


Cutting Stone

by sibley (ferns)



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Attempted Murder, F/M, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Rape/Non-con, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 19:57:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20364232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: Considering he's in desperate need of money, Ralph will take just about any job offered to him. Even the dangerous ones. So the case presented to him by one Sue Dearbon, who asks him to help her track down a man named Arthur Light, seems like an easy way to make money. How hard could it be to find one petty crook?...A lot more difficult than it sounds, as it turns out. But at least when this is over they won't ever have to see each other again, right?





	Cutting Stone

**Author's Note:**

> Well. Here it is. I've been working on this on and off since November of 2018 when I was inspired by a fic I will not name since it was "negative inspiraton" if you will, and I initially planned to finish it before the new year, but that obviously did _not_ happen. I was very entertained by the Sue-shadowing in the Flash's season five finale, and I thought it was funny that it somehow fell in line with this twisted version of canon that will probably (definitely) be nothing like whatever we actually see, which is what gave me the boost of energy and inspiration to write the back half of this. Speaking of the Flash's canon, I've twisted around a few minor details (like the plot for 4x13, for example) and I'm writing Ralph to be much more comic-accurate than he was actually characterized, though feel free to imagine that he's still played by Hartley Sawyer.
> 
> A few more things of note before we get to the content warnings: the basic premise of this is "local moron so infatuated with stranger he'll do anything she asks," so do with that what you will, the Arrowverse's version of Arthur Light _was_ a STAR Labs employee whose experimental weapons/gear in general were stored in a warehouse in Star City, and Sue in this fic is described the way she is when I draw her, including being Indian-American and having burn scars on her face. 
> 
> [**CW:** the premise for this fic involves past sexual assault. It is not discussed in detail, but it is made clear that it happened, and it cannot be divorced from the plot. Outside of that instance of sexual assault, (nongraphic) past sexual harassment, unresolved alcohol abuse, and premeditated murder are also mentioned/discussed (and in the case of the planned attempted murder, integral to the plot).]

So, here’s the thing. Ralph is  _ kind of  _ broke.

There’s a reason he tries to get other people to pay for his food as much as possible, and it’s the same reason he takes pretty much every job he can get his hands on. At least Cisco has started spending more time with him, which is great, because Cisco actually has money and is willing to let Ralph eat the remains of his pizza.

Still, any job he can actually get paid for is a good one, since Caitlin didn’t exactly pay him for helping her with the stuff with her weird dad. Superhero-ing doesn’t exactly put food in his mouth or pay his electricity bill. Unfortunately, his office is out of the way and nobody particularly likes him or leaves good reviews, so cases are few and far between. Which is why he quite literally jumps out of his seat when someone shows up unannounced and storms into his office/home.

She’s a woman, with short dark hair and brown skin, wearing a thick black jacket and blue pants. He’s sure he’d remember her if he took incriminating pictures of her, so  _ hopefully  _ she’s not here to throw the purse she’s carrying at his head (what? It’s happened before!) and is actually there with a job offer, but he scoots back a little bit in his chair just in case.

She braces her hands against the top of his desk, which is when he gets a good look at her face, and it takes a second for his brain to start working again because she’s  _ definitely  _ the most gorgeous woman he’s ever seen. Her eyes are deep brown, with a big burn scar covering the right one and going down to her neck, with a striking nose and eyebrows and brown skin. If he ran into her on the street he’d probably ask for her number right then and there.

“You’re the detective whose name is on the glass, right?” Her voice is raspy and quiet, like she’s afraid of being overheard, and he leans even further forward to hear her. Her eyes flicker back over to the door and she bites her lower lip. Ralph wonders if there’s somebody following her. She closed it, at least, so she probably doesn’t need to worry about anyone coming in. She’s the first stranger to come through that door in a month. “I need you to find somebody for me.”

Maybe it isn’t the smartest idea to get involved in this, since she’s clearly agitated and if she needs protection then he’s really not the right person to give it to her, but he needs money and she needs help and is also amazing looking, so… Why not? “Okay. Do you want to pay the first part of the fee up front or wait to pay all of it with the hourly charge, or-”

She reaches into her bag and pulls out a roll of bills rubber-banded together and drops it in front of him. “That’s two thousand, you can count it yourself. Is that enough for now? I can pay the rest when it’s done, no matter how long it takes, I have the money.” 

“Yeah, that’s-wow, yeah, that’s great for now. For sure.” Weirdly, she hasn’t asked about his license or credentials or even asked about the hourly rate itself, which is usually the first thing people bring up. Maybe she’s just taking her chances that he won’t scam her, trusting that the promise of more money will keep him on the case. And it certainly will, since this is the most money he’s  _ seen  _ in at least six months, it’s just a little strange. “What do you need?”

She starts pulling more stuff out of her bag, including a big manila folder that somehow fit in there without folding. “Like I said, I need you to find someone for me.” She puts the folder next to the money and opens it. It’s full of pictures and accompanied by a police record. A mugshot or two, plus a handful of blurry pictures that look like they were taken on cellphone cameras. Ralph knows he really shouldn’t be judging, but this guy is  _ ugly. _ “This is the guy. Arthur Light. Former STAR Labs employee”-he startles at that-“and current petty criminal.”

“Friend of yours?” It doesn’t seem all that likely, considering that she just said he’s now a crook and she’s obviously got quite a bit of money, but if he’s not a cheating spouse (which he totally isn’t, Ralph can tell that much), there’s really only one other reason that anybody hires him, and… “He owe you money, or something?”

“Or something,” she says tightly. She uses the pen and paper she pulled out with the folder and scrawls a phone number and an email address on it on it. “Look, I don’t care how you find him, I just need you to do it soon. That’s my number and my email, the second you even  _ think  _ you have an idea of where he might be, call me or text me or email me or  _ something. _ I need to find this guy.”

Ralph shrugs. “You got it. I’m Ralph, by the way. I mean-you said you saw my door, so you probably already knew that, but…” He holds his hand out for her to shake. Honestly, in the grand scheme of things that his life has become, someone bursting through his door and hiring him on the spot without checking his credentials doesn’t even make a blip on the weird radar. “And you are…?”

Hesitantly, she shakes his hand. He can feel her fingers shaking. “I’m Sue Dearbon.”

* * *

As it turns out, Arthur Light is a really hard guy to find. Like,  _ ridiculously  _ hard, especially for someone whose name sounds like it jumped right out of a Marvel comic.

Three days after he was hired with zero leads to speak of, not that he had much of anything to go off of in the first place, he checks back in with Sue just to tell her that he’s looking, honestly he is, but he just hasn’t  _ found  _ anything. He gets two words back.  _ Keep looking.  _ Great. It’s not like he wasn’t going to do that anyway.

“Who are you texting?” Barry asks, because he thinks that just because he’s second in command after Iris he gets to know all of their business. He’s probably right.

“Client. She asked me to look for a guy named Arthur Light, so…” It clicks. STAR definitely should’ve been the first place Ralph checked, shouldn’t it? “Oh, yeah, he worked here, didn’t he? Did any of you guys know him?”

That last part is directed toward Caitlin and Cisco, who are talking quietly a few feet away. They both look up and wrinkle their noses practically in unison. “Yeah,” Cisco says, voice hard, “we knew him. The guy got fired for a reason. I mean, Wells-uh, Thawne-said it was for creative differences or whatever, but I don’t know why he didn’t just expose the guy for the freak he was. It’s not like anybody would have cared. Nobody liked him.”

“So why was he really fired?” Maybe Sue is a former employer that he screwed over? It sure seems like she has the money to run a place like STAR, a place that could hire someone like Light before he turned into a criminal. “He steal from here, or something? Because if so I’m very sorry to tell you but I’ve been doing that for months now.”

“He liked to harass the female interns,” Caitlin says grimly. “Technically, there was supposed to be zero tolerance for that sort of thing, and Wells  _ did  _ fire some other staff members who did stuff like that, but… The guy was a creep and we all knew it. Ronnie and I used to have to let the newer staff hang out with us, because he knew Ronnie wasn’t afraid of punching him in the face if he had to. We all know he got fired because he finally went even farther than the too far he was already with some poor girl.”

Something twists  _ very  _ uncomfortably in Ralph’s gut. “So he’s a worse scumbag than anticipated. It’s not my business why the lady who hired him is looking for him.”  _ Well, it  _ kind of _ is… _ “Do either of you have any idea where he might be? I know it’s been years, but I can’t find him and at this point I’m really starting to think he’s not in the city at all, she just really seems to think he still is…”

“A lot of his stuff was stored around the country, so there’s a good chance he skipped town. Probably went to Star City, or something.” Cisco shrugs. Ralph’s pretty sure they’re not telling him everything about Light, but it’s enough to start turning the gears, so it’ll have to do. “Honestly, I hope he did. If I ever see him again, it’ll be too soon.”

Well, it’s a start. He’ll have to keep operating like the guy is still in town, though. Unfortunately, from what Cisco said and from how he’s already been asking around, it really doesn’t seem like Light had any friends or family members who might still be in touch with him. And Sue isn’t exactly being helpful, which he should expect at this point, since people  _ usually  _ aren’t. At least he’s getting paid quite a bit for this, thank god. Hopefully he won’t have to travel to Star City just to  _ get  _ that payment.

Still, he starts poking around at the smaller facilities that Barry says still belong to STAR Labs (and that he would know, since he’s the owner of the building, which is big news to Ralph) that have some of the guy’s stuff in them. The first one doesn’t turn up much, but he  _ finally  _ manages to track down one of the guy’s friends hanging around outside of the second one, although that really seems like it might be an overstatement of their relationship. 

He’s just the only person who doesn’t say “who?” when Ralph asks him if he knows or knew Arthur Light. It’s a win in his book. Or maybe it isn’t, because instead of saying “who”, he says “Why do you want to know? He screw your girlfriend, or something?”

“No,” Ralph says brightly. The guy actually looks surprised. That’s not good. He also smells like the bar he just stumbled out of. “I just have a business opportunity for him. I work with a lot of the people who were fired by STAR Labs or quit almost six years ago?” He pretends not to know the guy was let go long before that. “A handful of them mentioned his name, they thought he might need work.”

Apparently, somehow he looks trustworthy enough to get something of an answer on where Light might be. The stranger scowls at him, then nods and says, “Well, you’re better off looking for him in Star City. He hasn’t been here in weeks. Last I heard he was finally getting off his ass to get some of his old gear.”

Finally! “Thanks. I’ll be on the lookout, I know some people living in Star.” Of course there’s a chance that this is a false lead, but you can’t spell “false lead” without “lead”, so he’ll take whatever he can get. “Work contacts, and all, you know how it is.”

Ralph gets the hell out of there before that guy can see through his flimsy excuse for a lie and calls Sue. She picks up immediately.

_ “Did you find him?” _ There’s real, raw,  _ painful _ desperation in her voice, the kind that makes his skin crawl.  _ “Do you know where he is?” _

“Star City is the closest to an exact location that I’ve got.” Ralph hesitates. He’s not exactly worried about how the others will do without him, far from it. He knows they’ll be fine. Hell, they’ll probably be better than usual. Of course he can take time off from that to do his  _ real  _ job and go to Star City, but there is something he’s  _ actually  _ worried about. He just doesn’t know how he’s going to bring it up to her. 

_ “I’ll pay your plane fare on top of everything else,”  _ she says fast, almost before he’s done speaking.  _ “Please. You’re the only person who didn’t really ask questions and the only one who's gotten close, you can’t-please. I need to find him.” _

“I was thinking I could drive there,” Ralph says cautiously. “You wouldn’t have to pay me for the extra time.” He needs the money but… He’s willing to admit that he’s kind of getting sucked into this case. It’s definitely a few leagues above the usual fare of cheating spouses. “Besides, I was hoping you could come with me.”

It spoke volumes to how much Sue wanted Light found that she didn’t fire him on the spot or instantly hang up the phone. Not that he’d blame her. They hardly knew each other. She had hired him for a job and they had communicated, like, three times since then. Besides, the way he had worded that-oh, shit, that sounded  _ weird  _ and  _ super  _ creepy, didn’t it?

“In separate cars!” It’s probably a little too late for that clarification, but he can try. “Or you could fly and I could drive! I mean-I don’t-jeez, that sounded horrible, didn’t it? All I meant was that you can-you should come. You know more about this guy than I do. This isn’t helping my case, is it?”

There’s a long silence on the other side of the line, and then- _ “I’m paying for your plane ticket.”  _ He winces.  _ “I’m coming, though. I was going to anyway. I can’t let him get away again, I  _ can’t.  _ We’ll take the same plane. I’m not arguing with you on this, unless you want to quit.” _

There’s a challenge there. One he’s tempted to back down from. But he needs the money, and even more selfishly than that, he wants to see Sue again. There’s something about her… She’s  _ stunning.  _ It’s  _ weird.  _ Not that he thinks she’s beautiful, but that he gives a shit about whether he sees her in person again outside of just getting paid, even if she is gorgeous. Huh.

Instead, he sighs. “When do we leave?”

* * *

About forty minutes into his first anxiety attack, Ralph starts mentally drafting his will. Not that he has anything to give anybody, but still. He’s been thinking about it a lot lately since sort of dying at the hands of someone with the worst supervillain plot in the history of supervillains. When it happened, they just packed his stuff into a bunch of boxes and then did nothing with them. Kind of stupid, really.

So he’s drafting a will, and glaring at Sue out of the corner of his eye, because  _ she’s  _ perfectly comfortable in the giant metal death tube that could go hurtling toward the earth at any minute while  _ he’s  _ considering taking his chances jumping out the emergency exit. He’d probably survive, right? He could just make himself into a parachute, or something. He’s done it before.

Sue looks at him when he makes one too many gasping noises for her liking whenever anything happens (admittedly, since the plane only just took off, not much has happened), then drops her gaze down to his hands and frowns deeply. “Are you okay?”

He follows her gaze and yelps. “This happens sometimes!” He says, voice  _ far  _ too high pitched to be anywhere close to believable, if Sue’s expression is anything to go by. It’s not like he’s even lying that much! It’s happened before! “It’s fine!”

“Mmhmm. So literally melting is just normal human behavior?” She’s definitely laughing at him now. That’s not fair. The plane was  _ her idea,  _ he was the one who wanted to drive! Who really,  _ really  _ wanted to drive! He hardly even knows her and he’s already exposing half of his weaknesses to her! This sucks. Ralph wants to go home. Forget the job. Forget the fact that he needs money to survive. This isn’t worth it.

“I need to get  _ out  _ of here,” he hisses. Being a detective was so much easier when you were drunk all the time and didn’t have to deal with your problems and didn’t care if you ended up dead in a ditch. When you were actually trying to help someone out of the goodness of your heart and the need for their money, things sucked so much  _ harder. _ Nobody had ever made him take a plane before!

“Not long to go,” Sue lies. He hates this. Maybe he hates her, too. Stupid smart pretty women who dragged him into things without telling him everything. Yes, it had only happened this once, but that didn’t make it  _ good.  _ “You’ll be fine. I don’t pay you to literally melt all over the floor, okay?”

“Nope, you’re paying me to find your crazy not-friend.” Ralph digs his fingers into his forehead. He  _ needs  _ a drink. He didn’t have anything yesterday, things were too hectic, and the day before that he actually doesn’t remember, so he probably didn’t take anything that day, either. Is that why he’s so twitchy? He didn’t take his meds, but he hasn’t for months, so-he shudders again.

This is going to be a long three and a half hours.

* * *

The  _ very  _ first thing that Ralph does in Star City is find a bar.

The  _ very  _ first thing that Sue does in Star City is find a place that will sell her a good sharp knife.

They have  _ very _ different needs.

* * *

It’s not that Sue completely regrets hiring this guy in the first place, since he  _ did  _ get Sue her first and so far pretty much only lead, because of  _ course  _ that bastard skipped town. It’s just that she really should’ve come here on her own. But it was his idea, and even if he sounded like he was going to be a creep about it over the phone, once he stopped throwing up after the plane ride he actually seemed like he understood her very simple instructions.

_Evidently, _she was wrong, because _apparently _something that happens when you bring strangers to a new city is they immediately get tipsy and hook up with the nearest thing with a face. She can’t really say he made a _bad _choice with the guy she’s currently telling to leave because it’s past the morning deadline and Mr. Big Shot Detective is still asleep, since he’s pretty cute, but the rest of it was a horrible decision and she has absolutely no qualms with telling him so.

Unfortunately, when Sue tries to wake him up, he just latches those freakishly long arms around her waist and starts  _ hugging her  _ against the edge of the bed. Perhaps slightly less unfortunately, her fight or flight response kicks in as her heartbeat starts fluttering in her ears, and she ends up punching him in the face. Hard.

Which leads to Ralph shouting and springing backward while Sue shoves her hands down to her sides and tries to remember exactly which order her breathing exercises are supposed to go in. “Ow!” He yells at her, sounding more surprised than anything. “What the hell? Hey, where’d-”

“Don’t touch me without permission,” Sue snaps. She bites at her thumbnail. “This is not up for debate. Also, you’re late. We need to find Light before he leaves Star like he left Central.” She almost wants to laugh at the idea that he’s going on some sort of road trip, hurting people every step of the way. Almost. It’s not funny, anyway.

“I was asleep!” He protests. He jumps out of bed, they both simultaneously realize he’s in his underwear, and he jumps back into bed until she turns around. She can hear him struggling to put his clothes from the day before back on behind her. “How did you even get in my hotel room? You don’t have a card.”

“That’s not important right now,” she dismisses even though she knows that he’s going to push it, because from what she’s been able to tell from their limited interaction, that’s exactly the kind of person he is. Sue tries to keep reminding herself that she  _ needs  _ a detective for this. Her own skills aren’t enough. Once this guy is paid, she’ll never have to see him again.

“Yes it is!” He throws his arms up right on cue. Sue rolls her eyes. Why couldn’t she have picked somebody normal?  _ (Because you need a complete stranger who would be be too dumb to ask questions but smart enough to do what you want him to because he’s your best shot at finding Light?  _ The logical part of her brain suggests. It’s true, but she ignores it.)

“We’re wasting time,” she points out, shouldering her bag a little. The knife she bought isn’t in there, it’s in a safe place, somewhere this guy can’t find it. Somewhere where nobody will be able to use it against her. She hasn’t forgotten what she saw on the plane, either. There may have been an empty seat between them, which she had been counting on, but distance didn’t make you hallucinate somebody else literally melting. “I don’t-I’m not losing this guy again, do you understand me?”

Ralph sighs and drops his arms briefly before pointing at her. “Fine. Just this once, I will let this go, and that’s only because you’re paying me at the end of this.” He grumbles to himself for a second. “Why do you even want to find this guy, anyway? He doesn’t sound very… Fun.”

Sue doesn’t answer. “I’ll be waiting in the lobby,” she says coldly. “Be down there in ten minutes. Try not to be late this time.”

* * *

“I feel like I’m in a haunted house,” Ralph whispers, before inhaling a mouthful of dust and a  _ hopefully  _ empty cobweb and doubling over, trying to spit it out before his coughing causes whatever else got in his mouth to go down his throat. “Agh!”

Sue laughs at him. It’s a very beautiful laugh. Ralph wishes he would stop thinking about things like that while he’s busy trying to resent her. “It was your idea to look here,” she reminds him. “You said this was one of the places that Light’s equipment used to be.”

“Don’t remind me.” He scowls. Unfortunately, the shelves are mostly empty, and the stuff that’s left looks like it’s mostly just junk. “...You know, you never answered me earlier. Why  _ do  _ you want to find this guy?” Reluctantly, he adds, “You don’t  _ have  _ to tell me, but… I’d like to know why you flew me halfway across the country away from all my friends just to find this guy.” Well, “friends”, but still!

“Light hurts people,” she says coldly, all traces of laughter gone. She curls her fingers tighter around her flashlight. “He’s wanted by the police for little stuff and for escaping their custody, but he’s done so much worse. He ruins lives. Or at least he tries to. And I’m never going to let him do it again.”

“Did he hurt somebody you know?” It’s a way out more than anything else. Ralph would do something like this for a friend. But he also, according to Caitlin and Cisco, has “intimacy issues that need to be addressed,” whatever that means.

“I didn’t have these scars before I met him.” Sue’s voice is hard and flat. She sweeps her flashlight beam over another few shelves and finds nothing more than a dead rat that she curls her lip up at. “I didn’t even know who he was until afterward. He’s a monster. The more I looked for him, the more I found people who he’d attacked. Only, I don’t know, a quarter of them ever went to the police. A lot of them were STAR Labs employees. All of them were in their twenties, mostly below twenty five. Guess that’s his  _ type.” _

“It sounds like you were doing a pretty good job of investigating him on your own.” Ralph doesn’t turn around to look at her as he points his flashlight up at the ceiling for no particular reason before quickly spinning it away when he sees a pair of any eyes reflected in the flashlight beam. He remembers how difficult it is to get raccoons out of barns and shudders. “Why did you hire me?”

There’s a long pause before Sue says, “I lost him. I didn’t think he’d skip town or anything, I thought-it was stupid, but I thought he’d stay close to where he’d always been operating. I didn’t want to approach anybody who knew him because I didn’t want them telling him that I’d been looking around, because I was certain he’d remember me if someone described me to him, so I couldn’t ask like someone else could. You were just… A face he wouldn’t know. And you’re still here because…” 

_ Because you won’t ask too many questions?  _ No, he just asked a question and she practically told him her life story.  _ Because you’ll forget about this as soon as I pay you?  _ Better, since he hopefully will, and if he remembers it at all, the money will be enough to keep him from telling anyone.

“Sounds like some pretty good detective work to me,” Ralph decides when he realizes she’s not going to finish her sentence anytime soon. “You seem like you’ve got enough money as it is, but you could probably make a living doing stuff like that if you wanted to.” He hesitates and looks over his shoulder at where Sue is pretending not to look at him. “So… What are you going to do when you find Light?”

Sue doesn’t say anything. It’s enough of an answer that even Ralph can click the pieces together.

“Oh,” he says quietly. Now Sue’s looking at him harder. Challenging. He takes a deep breath and holds it for a few seconds, then lets it out slowly. Shit. This was a mistake. This  _ is  _ a mistake.  _ Heroes don’t kill  _ was one of Barry’s big lessons, wasn’t it? Honestly, everything immediately before and after he died is fuzzy at best. The silence stretches out longer, and Ralph makes up his mind. “Do you need any help?”

Maybe Barry should have tried harder to get things to stick. But Sue’s smile is sweet enough to be worth it.

* * *

They take the same taxi back to the hotel. Yes, an actual taxi, yellow with black check marks and everything. Star City is the biggest city Ralph’s ever been in, and while Sue seems perfectly at ease in the bustling streets, it’s  _ weird.  _ Sure, Central is pretty big, but it’s not all compacted like this.

“You should see New York,” Sue comments, watching his eyes light up as they pass a particularly large movie theater. Ralph’s practically glued to the window, nose squished up against the glass. “This is  _ nothing.” _

“You’ve been to New York?” It’s not exactly an exotic destination. But he’s always wanted to go. Again, money is a problem. Central was supposed to be a place to rebrand, until it just… Became his permanent home. Even if he never intended it to be. Still, nobody in Waymore had been to New York.

“I was born there. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, but it was my only home for a long time.” Sue shrugs, then laughs at a joke she doesn’t share with him. He wants to make her laugh. He wants that beautiful laugh to happen because  _ he  _ caused it. “You’d probably fit right in. Nobody would even look twice at you.”

“Well, I don’t know if I want  _ that,”  _ he admits. Isn’t the whole point of going to big cities that you might get famous? That people  _ will  _ notice you? That may not have been why he came to Central (and now to Star), but certainly that was everybody’s reason for moving to New York or Los Angeles, or somewhere else big and packed like those cities were. “Why did your family move there?”

“Hell if I know. Maybe they just wanted something new.” Sue taps the fingers of one hand on the taxi windows and bites the thumbnail on her other. “They lived in Bangladesh before that. To me it just seems like they swapped one big place for another.” She sighs. “Once you see one city, you’ve kind of seen them all.”

Ralph gapes at her. “No way! Every city is different. Not like farm towns. They all think the same, act the same, live the same. Try going to all the little places in Nebraska, then tell me every city is the same. It’s like they’ve all been copied and pasted.”

“I don’t know. I think it’s nicer out there than it is in cities. Less people who know you.” Sue presses her forehead against the window for a second, working her fingers together nervously.

He shakes his head. “Yeah, less people know you, but they all know each other, and if you’re not like them… Seriously, it’s bad for your health. You should’ve heard some of the things they called me back in Waymore.”

“Cities aren’t much better when it comes to that,” Sue argues. “Unless you get just the right one, and even then it’s a lot of people crammed in one place. They’re not all going to have the same opinion. And it’s not always easy for those opinions to change, unless they’re changing for the worse.” She huffs and mumbles something he can’t quite catch over the sound of a horn honking next to them.

“I guess.” Sue pretends that she can’t see him studying (meaning staring at) the side of her face. She doesn’t understand why-ever since she got them, a lot of people have stared at her burn scars. But he can’t see those from where he’s sitting, outside of the part that comes over where the bridge of her nose meets her forehead. “You know, you’re nice to talk to.”

“Thanks.” That’s probably not how most people would describe her. Bossy, maybe. Strong-willed in the bad way. Materialistic. A bad listener. Kind of weird. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

Ralph laughs just a little too loudly. “Nobody’s ever said that about me before. I tend to take conversations over, not participate in them.”

Sue laughs too. It’s enough to make her forget the knife in her bag, some. Enough to make her forget why she’s here. Not why she hired him. She can’t forget that. She  _ can’t  _ no matter how much she wishes that she could. But it’s nice. It makes her feel like she’s talking to a friend instead of a semi-stranger that she hired.

It makes her feel like maybe in another life, they could’ve really been friends.

* * *

As soon as he’s alone and gets the chance to, Ralph pops Sue’s name into Google to see if anything comes up. Really, he should’ve done this the second he was hired, but he should’ve done a lot of things in his life that he didn’t do for one reason or another. This one is no different.

He’s not expecting much. Maybe a family-owned company, since she seems to have a lot of money. Usually it takes more than a quick search to figure out somebody’s life story. But instead of pages of nothing useful or ads for a Dearbon company, he gets… A lot about Sue herself.

It’s mostly interviews with her. Not a lot about her parents, but he figures out pretty fast that she comes from a family with money. None of the interviews are within the past handful of years, most of them seem to be when she was twenty to twenty-one, but they’re all fairly interesting, even if Sue herself doesn’t look like she’s enjoying them. In the few filmed interviews there are, she looks exasperated when she’s asked the same questions over and over again. It’s weird to see her without scars.

No criminal record, though. All the stuff online is about the same thing. Susan Dearbon (no middle name ever seemed to be given, and he wonders if she even has one), who’s from New York but whose family is from Bangladesh (which he already knew), came out publicly five years ago after her and her family moved to Central City and immediately became a part of a miniature media circus. Apparently it was big news for awhile.

Ralph’s not surprised he hadn’t heard about it, though. Up until… Well. Okay. He can’t really say ‘up until’  _ anything,  _ because even if he’s not drunk as much as he used to be, he still is a lot of the time. Caitlin and Barry say it’s a problem, Cisco says he’s got the right idea on dealing with his issues, and honestly Ralph doesn’t care. It’s a good way to forget stuff. But it also sometimes makes it hard for you to remember hearing any news you may or may not have heard about any transgender socialites who were later going to hire you to track down criminals.

But… No criminal record is… Okay. It’s a good thing that Sue isn’t a criminal, and he didn’t expect her to be one, and he  _ hoped  _ that she wasn’t one, but if they’re planning on… He swallows. They haven’t actually said the words out loud. About what they’re planning on doing when they find Light. It just worries him, that’s all, because even if he’s never  _ killed  _ someone on purpose, he has kind of done it before (Barry hasn’t asked him if DeVoe is still hanging around in his mind, maybe because he knows the answer), so… 

He thinks about what Caitlin and Cisco said, about how Light treated the female employees at STAR before he was fired. How Sue said she didn’t have her scars before she met him. What Light’s maybe-friend said when Ralph asked him if he knew where he was, when he asked if Light had “screwed his girlfriend.” Sue punching him in the face on reflex when he grabbed her. Of  _ course  _ he knows what must have happened, anyone with a brain could figure it out, and if anything deserves justice, it’s that, but still. How can they do that?

Light can rot for all Ralph cares, but with DeVoe there wasn’t a body to dispose of outside of the one that had been used to frame Barry, evidence to take care of (at least he has some experience with that. Ha! God, he needs a drink), anything like that. And if there had been, the Flash and Vibe and their powers were on hand to take care of it.

Speaking of Vibe, maybe he could call Cisco and ask him for help.  _ Oh, Cisco, do you think you could send this body over to a dead Earth without telling Barry or Joe about it? Why yes, this is the corpse of your old coworker. Where did I get it? Well, that’s a  _ long  _ story…  _ Yeah, that would go over great.

But he can’t just back out now, can he? It’s not fair. Light shouldn’t get away with this. And he’s evaded the police before. And Ralph doesn’t want Sue going after him alone, even if she can probably take care of herself. It’s a delicate situation.

Ralph thinks about that beautiful smile again and groans as he rolls over and presses his forehead into a pillow.

* * *

“Oh, good,” Sue says happily. She’s holding two paper cups with cardboard rings in her hands. She looks like she’s in a much better mood than she was yesterday. “I thought I was going to have to wake you up again. I got this for you.” She shoves one of the cups at Ralph and he takes it, downing half of it even though it burns his mouth and he  _ hates  _ the taste of black coffee.

“Thanks,” he says anyway. “You look…” He’s never wanted to describe anybody as  _ chipper  _ before, because he’s never met the living squirrel that descriptor could only apply to, but… “Better. I mean, you looked nice yesterday, you looked  _ great _ yesterday, but you look happier.”

“I got a lead.” Sue smiles. Ralph stubbornly resists the urge to tell her she’s beautiful and tries not to think about it. She’s his  _ client.  _ They may be planning a-a-a-a  _ crime _ together, but she’s still his client. It’s bad form to tell clients they’re beautiful and make the room light up when they smile and look like they have the  _ softest  _ hair… “I have a-well, he’s not my friend, but we know each other. I tracked him down, made him tell me if he’d heard anything about Light.”

“And he had?” Ralph smiles back. He’d thought Sue would be a little more worried about this-the closer they got to finding Light, the closer they got to bringing him to justice, of course she would be happy about that, but it also meant that they were getting closer to having to-Ralph doesn’t want to think about it. “What did he say?”

“He said someone saw Light hanging around a bar in downtown Star a few nights ago.” Sue’s smile got sharper. “Place called The Brambling. Oliver said it’s next door to a strip club.” Her voice suddenly tightens and she looks somewhere off over Ralph’s shoulder. “I figure he likes to go _there, _too.”

Without really thinking, Ralph slings his arm over Sue’s shoulder. He has to bend over, because she’s tiny, but it works. “Hey, it’s okay. We’ll find him. We can make sure he doesn’t hurt anybody again.”

So briefly that later Ralph would wonder if he had imagined it, Sue leans against him, bumping her forehead into his chest. Then she shivers and steps away. “Please don’t touch me.” She keeps looking at his arm thoughtfully, though. “Say, how refined  _ is  _ your shapeshifting?”

Ralph thinks about denying it a second  _ after  _ he looks nervously around at the other people in the hotel lobby, all of whom are ignoring them and going about their lives. Sue’s smiling again at his slip up. Dammit. He can’t be mad. He needs to learn how to be mad at her. Well, at least it’s not like he  _ really  _ cares about his identity. “It’s not really shapeshifting,” he says reluctantly. “Only kind of.”

“I saw you melt on the plane.” Sue’s voice is teasing. “That sure looked like a little more than ‘kind of’ shapeshifting to me.”

Ralph steers her out of the hotel. “I can stretch,” he says once they’re safely outside. “There’s a limit to it, I’ve been testing it lately. So far it’s about a hundred yards, but I think I can go farther. And I can-like-expand?” He demonstrates with his finger. “And I’ve been learning to shapeshift, kind of. I can look like different people if I have enough time beforehand…”

Sue’s eyes spark with interest and she bites her thumbnail thoughtfully. “You can look like another person?”

“I disguised myself as the Flash once,” Ralph says proudly.  _ That  _ had been fun. Terrifying but fun. “A metahuman trafficker was trying to buy him, and the leader of our team-you remind me of her, actually-thought it would be a good idea to switch us out so that she bought me instead. That way the Flash could rescue me and everyone else without them expecting it.”

“So you  _ do  _ know the Flash.” Sue looks like she’s cheered up quite a bit, and she bumps into Ralph a little with her shoulder. She can’t budge him, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s adorable.  _ She’s  _ adorable. She starts walking faster, and even though her legs are a lot shorter than his she still manages to outpace him.  _ “And  _ you can shapeshift. This is great!”

“It is?” Ralph follows her, a little slower. He throws his empty cup away. “What’s your plan?”

Sue shoots him another smile over her shoulder.

* * *

The Brambling is dark and it smells kind of strange, but Ralph doesn’t dare cover his nose and mouth. The criminals in Star City aren’t necessarily  _ worse  _ than the ones in Central, contrary to what a lot of people would have you believe, and neither city has a problem as bad as Gotham does, but despite technically once being one Ralph has no love for crooked cops, and this place seems full of them.

Sue opted to wait down the street at a much more reputable establishment. Ralph almost wishes she were here, but… He’s fairly sure there’s a reason he can’t see a single female patron on this bar. He tries to remember what Light’s face looked like in the pictures as he scans the small huddles of people, a couple of whom are staring at him.

_ There. _

Ralph is a little surprised with the force of the cold hard anger that sinks into his lungs and makes it hard to breathe. He expected to be mad at Light, he’s  _ been  _ mad at him since he found out he even existed, but he thought he’d be able to put that aside. Now he’s not sure he can do this without breaking Light’s neck on the spot.

He still crosses the room toward him, sitting down nearby. At least he can get a drink here, and he orders one as he watches Light out of the corner of his eye. Light doesn’t seem to notice that he’s there, he’s too busy talking to the person sitting next to him, a man Ralph doesn’t recognize. They talk for about five minutes more, and Ralph grows more nauseous by the second as he practically hugs his beer without drinking it like he meant to.

When the stranger leaves, Ralph practically flings himself down beside Light before he can leave. “Wait,” he squeaks out, far less demanding than he intended to. “Wait,” he repeats, more sure this time. “I have something to talk to you about.”

“What?” He grumbles, digging his fingers into the tabletop. Ralph can’t help but look at his hands, and he notices the thin wisps of smoke rising from his fingertips. He remembers what Sue said about her scars, and he bites down a scream at the thought of Light pressing his hand against her face.

“I-I work with a group that gets people who were fired from STAR Labs new job opportunities. You seemed like a good candidate,” he says, trying to keep his voice steady. He’d told Sue what he had told Light’s maybe-friend back in Central City, and they’d agreed that it was better to keep the same story so he wouldn’t forget it, even though Ralph had completely changed his appearance since then.

Sue had helped him dye his hair black, which looked horrible, and then had left him to do the rest, which basically meant standing in front of a mirror rearranging his face over and over again until he decided what looked the best-or worst, as the case may have been. Then he just added on some fake muscles and bang, completely new guy.

Light’s eyes literally flash in The Brambling’s dim lighting. Weirdly, it reminds him of the way Barry’s eyes flicker sometimes, not that he spends a lot of time studying Barry’s eyes or anything. Ralph pushes Barry out of his mind and imagines beating Light’s face to a pulp instead and relaxes slightly. It’s a very calming thought. “Didn’t you do a background check?”

“Of course we did.” Ralph rolls his eyes and makes his voice a little deeper. “You think we care about that? You’re not the only person fired from STAR with a criminal record we’ve been looking at.” He fishes around for any other former employees turned criminals. It’s hard to think with Light so close after what he did to Sue. (Ralph’s a little surprised at himself for being so protective over somebody he hardly knows.) “Ever heard of Albert Michaels? We’re the ones who found that guy work again.”

There. Now he finally had Light’s interest. All he had to do now was just give him the address that Sue had picked out without punching him in the face and let Light’s curiosity and desire for money do the rest of the work. Which was much easier said than done.

By the time Ralph finally leaves The Brambling, he is unfortunately far less drunk than he had wanted to be when he arrived, and he heads in the opposite direction of where Sue is waiting to come around the street the other way and up to meet her. It’s hardly going to shake a dedicated follower but he’s too tired to do anything else.

Sue looks worried when he sits down beside her, still disguised. “Hey,” he says softly. “I gave him the address.” He looks around, noticing for the first time that this is the outdoor seating area of a pretty expensive restaurant, and his stomach clenches. Oh, wow, he’s a lot hungrier than he thought. Maybe there’s a burger place near the hotel. “Nice place. Have you paid yet?”

She shakes her head. “I haven’t ordered anything. I’ve been too nervous to eat.” Sue closes her eyes. Ralph wants to hug her again. It’s not fair. Sue’s so nice. Yeah, she’s bossy, and she likes to get her way, and he hardly knows anything about her, but he knows that she’s kind and beautiful and doesn’t deserve to have to deal with this. “The closer we get the more I remember it.”

“Hey.” Without thinking, Ralph takes her hand. “You know we don’t have to do this, right? We don’t have to show tomorrow. We can tip off the Star City police, tell them that we saw Light hanging around there. He’s technically wanted, isn’t he? We don’t have to do this.”

Sue bows her head but doesn’t pull her hand away. “You still don’t understand,” she says slowly. “I have to. I have a chance to stop it. You told me, remember, you  _ told  _ me that we could make sure he didn’t hurt anybody else ever again. And we  _ will  _ make sure he doesn’t.”

Ralph squeezes her hand tightly, and Sue squeezes back just as hard. “Okay,” he says quietly. “Okay. I’m with you all the way, Sue.”

* * *

They get to the location before Light does, of course. It’s a little ways out of the city, a relatively new building that hasn’t been sold yet. They take the signs down before they get there and wait. They don’t say anything. Ralph tries not to think about anything, either.

Despite his awkward pressuring when they left, they haven’t actually come up with a good plan yet. Yes, Sue has a plan that she’s following, but Ralph thinks it’s a  _ terrible  _ plan, because while ambushes are effective, tiny socialites wielding big knives  _ aren’t,  _ and Ralph’s worried Light’s going to blast her as soon as he sees her coming.

At least he’ll be there if that happens. He’s been testing his limits since he got his powers, and he’s found that he’s pretty invulnerable. Acid  _ hurts  _ but it doesn’t go straight through him. Blades work but only if he lets them, otherwise they just hurt without doing any damage. Bullets don’t go right through him the way they used to. Explosions hurt but that’s about it. Burns do the most damage after acid, so he’ll have to watch out for the blasts, but it’s not  _ that  _ bad. He’ll be able to protect Sue if it comes down to it.

Speaking of Sue, Ralph is pretty sure she think she’s doing a good job of hiding her shaking. She’s definitely not. He wonders if it’d be okay if he asked if he can hug her, but guesses that the answer will be a pretty firm  _ no  _ considering who they’re setting an ambush for. She’s been twitchy since they met up (on time and everything) that morning. It doesn’t take a genius to guess why, of course.

Ralph’s still disguised, which Sue at least perked up enough to tease him about while they were in the cab-of course they didn’t ask the driver to take them to the site of their future crime directly, and they walked most of the way-and Ralph is still proud of himself for making her laugh by putting on a thicker midwest accent and trying out different aliases.

She isn’t laughing now, and while he doesn’t hug her, Ralph does step closer. “With you all the way, remember?” He promises. She looks up at him, eyes big, and silently adjusts her grip on her bag. “No matter what happens.”

While it’s bad form to call your clients beautiful, it’s definitely worse form to plan crimes with them. Especially crimes of this magnitude. And he knows that he can never tell anybody else about this, that even if after this they never speak to each other again and she doesn’t give him the money in person (to be fair, though, he’s kind of forgotten about the money) this will always tie them together. Stuff like this does that to people.

After three hours, Light shows up. When he opens the door, which squeals loudly on its hinges, several things happen in very quick succession.

First, Ralph runs from his place and grabs Light around his middle to shove him to the ground and crack his head against the hard cement floor.

Second, Ralph leans that things do not work like they do in movies, and Light remains very much conscious despite the loud noise his skull made against the ground, hands lighting up like signal flares as he jabs them into Ralph’s chest and sends pain ripping through his body.

Third, in between swearing, Ralph manages to lift Light up and hit him against the floor again. This time, while Light remains conscious, all he does is twitch feebly while Ralph drags him over to the chair that Sue helpfully set up and drops him down in it, using Light’s own jacket to haphazardly tie him up.

“This isn’t part of the plan,” Sue hisses, gripping the knife she took out of her bag as she stumbles forward. The glare she’s sending him falls flat because she’s still shaking hard.

“I know.” He risks patting her shoulder. “But it’s okay. We got him, right? It’s okay.” 

Sue moves a little closer. Her throat feels like it’s going to close completely. Like her chest and stomach is filled with sharp, heavy stones. She hasn’t seen him since that night, that awful, awful night, and she can hardly stand to see him now. The only reason she hasn’t thrown up yet is because she knows that this time the roles are switched. She’s not the one whose helpless this time around.

Sue holds her knife tighter and takes a few deep breaths. Breathe. Breathe. In and out, in and out, in and out. She has the power. She’s the one in control of the situation. Sue readjusts her grip again. She can make sure that nothing happens because of him again. She can make sure that nobody gets hurt because of him again. She’s run through this a million times in her head and managed to end him each and every time, so why is real life so much different?

Light can’t even see her, since Ralph’s covering his eyes. She wonders why Ralph is still here. She’s paying him of course-and she’s certain the bill for his services will be astronomically high, even if it’ll be no trouble for her to pay it-but why is he still here? Why did she even sort of tell him that she was going to be doing this in the first place?

Maybe she likes him, just a little bit. He’s nice. And he’s funny. And he’s tall. And he’s willing to do this with her, do stuff  _ unprompted  _ that will help her with this like cover Light’s eyes so that he doesn’t see either of them coming, so there must be something… Sue swallows thickly. She can’t think straight.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” she whispers, and her voice cracks. She supposes she’s lucky the tears are hiding her voice in case something goes wrong and Light gets away. “I know he deserves it, I  _ know  _ he deserves it, but I don’t know if I can do this.”

Sue squeezes her eyes shut and tries to breathe. He deserves it. He deserves it. He deserves it. She knows he does. So why can’t she do this? Why can’t she suck it up and-

Hands cup her face, and Sue opens her eyes to see that Ralph has wound his body around Light’s like a boa constrictor, binding him to the chair at the same time as gagging him and covering his eyes. It’s kinda gross. He moves a little so he’s blocking her view and looks her straight in the eyes. “Remember what I said?” He prompts gently. “I’m with you all the way. Even if you can’t do this. Even if you can. I’m with you. Alright?”

Sue drops her knife and hugs herself. Her gloved hands feel strange on her arms through her thick jacket. “I was supposed to be able to do it,” she whispers. Ralph wipes her tears away. He feels like he’s actually her friend. “I was-I planned it. I have to make sure he doesn’t hurt anybody else, not ever again. He… deserves it. He deserves it. You  _ know  _ he deserves it.”

“It and worse,” he agrees. “But you don’t have to do that. There are other ways. Or we can do this one. I just…” He turns bright red and starts stumbling over his words. Well, he’s gotten this far. Why stop now? “I just-uh-I want you to be happy. And I think-I think that this happening will make you happy. But I don’t  _ know  _ if  _ you _ being the one to do it will-will make you happy. Do you get it?”

Sue nods a little. “I know him being gone will make me happy, but I don’t know if this will make me happy,” she admits. Somehow, a tiny little giggle rises in her throat.  _ Happy.  _ She hasn’t been happy for a long time. Somehow, she’s probably laughed more this week than she has in months. She bites her thumbnail and swallows the feelings down. “We probably should’ve talked about this on the way here, huh?”

“It’s okay.” Ralph shrugs, which looks  _ super  _ weird. His whole body looks weird. Like he’s a marionette. She wonders what would happen if she pulled just right. “But if we’re not going to do this, then what  _ should  _ we do?”

Sue looks at Arthur Light, who seems to be recovering quite nicely and is now kicking and squirming and shouting things through the makeshift gag that is Ralph’s body. Arthur Light, the guy who tried to ruin her life. Arthur Light, who almost succeeded, who made her think everything was going to be terrible forever. Arthur Light, who she was going to kill until a few seconds ago. She looks at him and swallows one last time and rolls her own shoulders back and she looks away and doesn’t look at him again.

“I think I know someone we could call.”

* * *

It’s probably  _ super _ weird to say that he  _ likes  _ sitting on the floor and looking up at Sue, right? Like, the weirdest. His head is probably just on the fritz from the lack of alcohol and the fact that he hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since he left Central, or even for some time before that, he decides, and he flops back onto the floor of the hotel room anyway. Sue, who is sitting on his bed, is biting her thumbnail. She does that a lot, he’s noticed. It’s kind of cute. Which is also super weird to say.

“Did we make the right choice?” Ralph says suddenly.

At the exact same time, Sue asks, “Do you want me to pay you now and then just add on the cost of the plane ticket home?”

“What?”

“What?”

“I asked you first,” Ralph counters, sitting up. He needs a drink. And probably his meds. (No, he doesn’t, he left them in Central City buried in a drawer he never opens for a  _ reason,  _ and that reason is because he doesn’t need them and he’s never needed them. His brain isn’t too fast, everyone else’s brains are just too slow.)

“I’m not a child. Answer the question.” Sue’s back to nearly drowning in her huge black coat again, despite the fact that it’s relatively warm in the hotel room. She looks tiny and he wants to hug her. Very badly. Shit, what was it that Caitlin had told him that one time he confessed to being confused as to why he didn’t like Barry and understood he was married but still wanted to  _ maybe  _ do  _ stuff  _ with him? That adrenaline increased attraction?

No. Question. Sue’d asked him a question. “You don’t have to pay me now,” he says, kind of reluctantly. He needs the money badly but getting paid will mean that this is over. The need for money so he can stay alive outweighs sentiment but he… Likes Sue. The circumstances are (were) horrible but he likes spending time with her. “You can pay me for the same amount of time later as you would now, if you want?”

“Why wait?” Sue says flatly. “Just tell me your hourly rate or make something up. I can pay it, whatever it is. If you want, I'll even get you a ticket back to Central later today.” She goes quiet. “And to answer your question, I don’t know if we made the right call.” Her voice cracks. “I don’t know if I ever will. And that’s horrible, isn’t it? I just want this whole thing to be  _ over  _ with. Besides, you did your job. You helped me find Light. That’s all I was paying you to do.”

Ralph reads the unspoken  _ you  _ volunteered _ to help me plan and attempt a murder without me paying you.  _ Which he did. He definitely did. That is absolutely something that happened. It’s not like he was expecting to-to become best friends with Sue over it or something. Or maybe he did. Again, he recalls that time Caitlin told him he had intimacy issues. So what if he does, huh? That’s not a problem. Just because they have  _ issues  _ in the name…

The sounds from the TV, despite their low volume, feel like they’re digging into his skull regardless. Breaking news about how the vigilante Green Arrow found one Arthur Light at an almost entirely empty warehouse outside of Star City, tied up with spare materials and bleeding from a head wound, and had called in a tip. A premeditated attack. They’d have to find the culprits, even though it was probably a hopeless venture, since anyone with a brain knew the Green Arrow himself had done this to him-

Sue turns off the TV and bites her lower lip hard in a vain attempt to stop it from trembling. Ralph wonders if she would be okay with him holding her hand and decides not to bother asking. God, what’s with his brain today? (Maybe he’s just trying to think about literally anything but what they almost did. What they could have done. What they were  _ going  _ to do.)

“I guess I just don’t really know what I want to do,” he admits. It probably isn’t good to make her make more choices after what just happened, right? After they just went through all of that? But he’s pretty sure he’s almost as lost as she is. “Do you want me to go home? I can. I can leave today. If you want. I mean. Uh. You do, don’t you? Because… I will, if you want me to. I can email you with my usual rates when I get, um, home.” No need to go into his complicated living situation now.

She bows her head and squeezes her knees. The silence goes on for so long that Ralph’s starting to think that she’s not actually going to answer him at all when she swallows and makes a tiny sobbing sound in the back of her throat. “Would you have really done it?”

“Yeah.” It comes out a little bit faster than he meant it to. Or maybe it comes out exactly how he meant it to, because honestly, it’s the  _ truth.  _ He would’ve helped her do it. She deserved it. She  _ deserves  _ it. More than deserves it. And so did-does Light. “And I’m not going to tell anyone about it, either. I promise. Cross my heart and everything.”

“I think you should leave today,” Sue says after another long silence. She still hasn’t looked up. “I’ll leave in a few days. It’ll look better if we go separately in case anybody gets suspicious.”

Ralph stands up and rubs his palm with his thumb, torn between finally offering her that hug and leaving her to have some alone time and to get his stuff together. He should probably go. They’re not friends. They’re just two people who almost committed a serious but justified crime together. She’s his client, not one of his buddies. It’d be weird if he stayed to comfort her. But she probably needs it, doesn’t she? What they just did was… It’s the kind of thing that ties people together, or something cheesy like that. However weird and bad he’s feeling about it, she’s definitely feeling worse.

When he opens his mouth, though, Sue finally looks up, wiping away tears, and he has no choice but to close it again immediately. What was he  _ thinking,  _ of course she wouldn’t want him to hug her after everything that just happened. She’d think he was an idiot for asking in the first place. “Can you leave? Please? I’ll get the ticket for you, I just-I need to be alone right now. Please. Go get packed, or something.”

Ralph nods as he leaves. He considers telling her that he’s there for her. That he understands how she’s feeling, at least sort of, because he was there. That he’s happy she was able to call her friend, who is apparently a Star City vigilante because  _ holy shit, people are pinning this on the Green Arrow?  _ That he hopes everything will be okay for her after all of this.

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t say anything of those things. He just goes back to his hotel room.

* * *

He hardly sees Sue again before his flight leaves. She doesn’t end up buying the ticket for him, she gives him the money to buy it himself and tells him to email her about his usual fees. They don’t really say much to each other outside of that. Ralph tries not to think about it outside of reminding himself that they’re  _ not friends.  _ Just because they worked together,  _ briefly,  _ after she hired him, that doesn’t  _ mean  _ anything.

Besides, he has to spend most of his mental effort trying not to fall apart on the plane like he did when they flew into Star City. This time he’s not sitting next to someone who won’t freak out if they see him suddenly start melting. And, well, it’s easier to think about not melting than about Sue, somehow. Maybe it’s because she’s connected to what they almost did, and that’s a hard topic for  _ anyone  _ to think about? Yeah, that’s probably all it is. He hopes that’s all it is.

He doesn’t email her about his fees. He’d give her a discount, anyway. A friends and family deal, if those were a real thing that private investigators could give. She sends a few follow-up emails, but he doesn’t respond to any of them even though he does read them. About three days after he gets back, Ralph finds an envelope full of cash taped to his door. Not the most secure method, and she overshot it a little (not that he’s in any position to complain, even if his gut does tell him it’s more of a bribe than it is honest compensation for his work), but it’s the thought that counts.

He keeps his word about not telling anyone what they almost did. What they started to do. Cisco and Iris both think it’s a bit suspicious that the Green Arrow found an injured Light tied up in a warehouse so soon after Ralph was asking about him, but Cisco seems too tired to push it and Iris has too many other mostly Nora-related things on her mind to push him about it for too long. But even if they had pushed, he wouldn’t have sold Sue out. He promised he wouldn’t, and even though his promises don’t mean much and he’s a pretty terrible liar, he  _ meant  _ it.

The next time Ralph sees Sue is weeks later. Maybe over a month. He isn’t great with time, and everything has felt kind of distorted since he left Star City. Well, more distorted than usual.

Unfortunately, it’s not how he would’ve imagined it-if imagining meeting Sue again was something he did on a regular basis, which it definitely  _ wasn’t- _ since the next time he sees her it’s because her wide, terrified eyes are being projected onto every screen in STAR Labs.

“So they have hostages?” Barry says grimly from just behind him. It’s kind of hard to hear him. Like he’s farther away than he actually is. Sue isn’t even the only one on the screen, there are two other women and a man with her, but for some reason it’s like he can’t look away. “I see seven gunmen, do we know if they’re all metahuman?”

“Nope. At least one is, but that’s all we have to go on. And they haven’t started making any demands, so we’ve got no idea what they want.” Cisco’s already pulling on his gloves. “I can get us both there faster than you can run. We’ll have to split up, we can get those three out of there but they might have more hostages.” 

“I’m coming too,” Ralph says in a rush. He’s the most bulletproof one of them, he’ll be okay if he gets shot. Sue-the hostages won’t. Barry heals fast and can phase and Cisco’s stopped bullets in their trajectory before but still, if they get lucky… “I’m already changed, I can-you’ll need all the help you can get, right?”

They don’t argue.

They split up as soon as they get inside. Barry and Cisco are going to take down the gunmen, and it’s Ralph’s job to get to the hostages and make sure none of them get hurt. He can’t see Sue anymore. Five hostages and one missing Sue. He knows it’s not right to be more worried about her than about everyone else. He really does. But he still is.

He gets them out and to the waiting police and ambulances with little incident-he goes for the youngest one first, a teenager with bright blue hair and scared brown eyes clinging to their dad’s hand until he holds a finger to his lips and sneaks them away. Hostage situations are always messy, but luckily everyone here cooperates with him despite their terror, even though he’s sure he wasn’t their first choice for a superhero rescuer. Ralph thinks about Sue the whole time, but when he gets the last hostage out and asks where she could’ve gone, no one has any answers for him.

Barry and Cisco get the six gunmen pretty easily. None of them use powers to protect themselves, and even though they fire at both of them, Barry and Cisco get through it just fine and without injury. For a brief moment, Ralph wonders if he imagined seeing her.

And then Barry says that they’re still missing at least one gunman and a hostage. That none of the other gunmen are saying a damn word about where their partner could’ve gone. That they should split up, because even though he could search the whole building quickly on his own any movement might set the guy off, and they  _ really  _ don’t want him killing the hostage.

The hostage that is definitely Sue. They have  _ Sue  _ and they could hurt her. They could  _ kill  _ her. He can’t let that happen. They aren’t friends, they’re definitely not friends, but they’re  _ something  _ to each other because they kind of have to be and he can’t let her die-get hurt. It’s easier to think of it as her getting hurt. Not dying. Not dying. Just potentially getting hurt.

Barry tells him to go right. He says that Cisco will go left and he’ll go center. It’s a one-story building, so there aren’t any other floors to search, and if they don’t find them in the building Barry will have to risk the hostage getting injured by searching the surrounding area for them by himself, since Cisco’s not confident in his ability to get a vibe on either of them with such little usable information and without any personal belongings to go off of.

Everything feels a little fuzzy and wrong as Ralph creeps around corners and peers into empty rooms. What kind of building  _ is  _ this, anyway? Why were Sue and everyone else even here in the first place before they got taken hostage? If it were a bank or something it would make sense, but this definitely isn’t a bank.

Regardless of what the building is actually used for, it feels foreboding and frightening as he goes through the motions without seeing anyone. Barry and Cisco don’t shout for help or show up out of a breach or in a burst of sparks to say that they saved the last hostage and took out the last gunman. The silence gets longer and longer and all he can hear is his own breathing and footsteps and heartbeat in his ears. It’s  _ terrifying,  _ even though it shouldn’t be, since it’s not like this is the first time he’s done this.

Maybe he’s just afraid of seeing Sue on the ground in one of the rooms, already dead and past saving.

Since it’s so silent, the sudden burst of pounding footsteps that sound out of nowhere coming from ahead of him while he’s half-ducked into a room practically give him a heart attack, and Ralph barely has time to look up in their direction before something freezing cold hits him  _ hard  _ across the face and sends him crashing into the room he was just peering into.

Ralph’s head spikes with pain as he looks up to see someone who can only be the last gunman (he actually doesn’t look like he even  _ has  _ a gun on him, so maybe he’s not technically a gunman at all?), who’s holding what looks like a chunk of rebar made out of ice with both of his hands. Ralph is pretty sure there’s blood from his nose all over his face, and he unsteadily pushes himself up with one hand while blearily wiping at his face with the other.

“Take it easy, Iceman,” he gets out. Damnit, shouldn’t have let that guy take him by surprise. This never would’ve happened to Barry-oh, god, if Barry finds out about this, he's going to be insufferable. He was just so worried about Sue… Sue! Where is she? If this guy did something to her… “Look, this place is surrounded by cops. The Flash and Vibe are looking for you. You might as well tell me where your hostage is and surrender now.”

“I’m not going to jail,” the guy spits, gripping his ice-weapon tighter. It grows bigger in all directions with a crackling sound like when Killer Frost gives in to Cisco’s begging and cools down one of his drinks. “I’m not going to  _ fucking jail,  _ okay?”

It  _ hurts  _ to keep rubbing at his nose, and he’s pretty sure he’s still getting blood all over his stupid face that didn’t stretch the way it was supposed to when he got hit (stupid. His head is supposed to be in the game, this is a serious situation. Or maybe it has something to do with the cold, the way cold messes up Barry’s powers), so he stops, holding that hand up in the air in surrender. Ralph’s pretty sure he can handle whatever it is that this guy decides to throw at him. It might hurt, but he’ll probably live. But if it comes down to it, he knows that Sue-that  _ the hostage- _ won’t.

“Okay. I get it. You don’t want to go to jail. The quality of the food is low and the abuse of human rights is high, and you’d rather stay out here. I get it, buddy. I get it.” Ralph tries very hard not to swallow his own blood while he’s talking. “Why don’t you just let your hostage go, okay? You can take me instead, or something. Just let the nice lady go and take me and get the hell out of here. You can go to Coast City or Metropolis or somewhere else with a lot of sun, yeah?”

The guy lowers his weapon ever so slightly. Ralph prays that he doesn’t turn around. Prays that he doesn’t notice that Ralph is looking just a little over his shoulder. This guy seems smart, if a little on edge, but Ralph really hopes he’s not smart enough to look behind him.

“I guess,” he says after a long moment of consideration. “But I don’t have anything to stop you from using your-”

The  _ crack  _ of Sue smashing a heavy spar of wood into his head is so loud that for a moment Ralph honestly thinks a gun has gone off.

The guy goes down fast, and Ralph pounces on him before he can try to crawl away and flips him over onto his stomach, pulling his hands behind his back. He doesn’t have any handcuffs on him, power-dampening or not, but luckily the guy seems to be in too much pain to call up any more painful blunt force ice weapons despite his squirming.

He looks up at Sue. He’s well aware that he looks awful with blood all over his face and costume and that his mask is crooked and that he’s literally holding down someone who just abducted her, but she’s also visibly shaking hard and her eyes are full of tears and he really, really wants her to be okay.

“Did he hurt you? Are you okay?” He asks, realizing a few seconds too late that he should maybe disguise his voice around her since he never  _ technically _ told her that he worked with the Flash because he was the Elongated Man. She’d probably connected the dots on her own, right? There are only so many minor shapeshifters with connections to the Flash in Central City, aren’t there?

Sue makes a small hiccuping sound and drops her makeshift weapon. It clatters on the floor. “I don’t know,” she says, hands kneading into the bottom hem of her shirt. “I don’t  _ know.  _ He threw me into a chair, that’s how I was able to get  _ that”- _ she kicks at the piece of wood on the ground, which Ralph now recognizes as a chair leg-“but I guess it doesn’t hurt yet, but-I-”

“It’s okay,” Ralph says. He wishes he could be quieter, but the guy underneath him is starting to be pretty loud about the bloody injury on the back of his head. He’s probably fine, head wounds usually bleed a lot without being too serious. Ralph knows that from experience. (And speaking of blood, Ralph’s pretty much entirely given up on his quest to not get any in his mouth.) “There are ambulances outside, we can-”

He’s interrupted by Barry, skidding in way too late to be really helpful and probably assuming that Ralph either got killed or otherwise really needed his help. 

“Hey, you got him,” Barry greets. Ralph has never been more grateful that he’s saving the lecture about calling for help until they aren’t in full view of a terrified hostage. He’s also grateful Barry hasn’t said anything about his messed up face. “Vibe’s outside with the police, but I’ve got these.” He holds up a pair of power-dampening cuffs. “Let me take the guy.”

As Ralph stands up and lets Barry run the guy outside, he notices that Barry didn’t even look at Sue. She’s the hostage, isn’t she supposed to be the top priority here? He wipes at the blood on his face again and then awkwardly maneuvers around her so that he can offer her his  _ not  _ disgusting hand, though he’s not really expecting her to take it.

She doesn’t, but she  _ does  _ latch onto his arm, and he can feel how hard she’s shaking as she tries to choke down her tears. Ralph carefully starts heading back down the hallway in the direction Barry left, steering her along beside him. He tries not to get any blood on her and hopes that they don’t scare the shit out of the officers outside, since he’s positive he looks absolutely disgusting and Sue is falling apart. (They shouldn’t see her like this.  _ He  _ shouldn’t see her like this. Nobody should see her like this. Nobody should’ve made her like this.)

As soon as they’re outside, an EMT comes running over to pull Sue away from him. Ralph winces when she holds onto his arm for just a moment longer than she really has to. “Be careful!” He calls after them, before realizing that the EMT definitely knows to be because it’s literally their job and they probably don’t appreciate him telling them how to do it. “Um, I mean-”

Suddenly Barry’s there, pulling on his elbow. “Let’s go back to STAR,” he says quietly. “We did good work today. No casualties and we caught all the gunmen. There’s nothing else we can do for them, and you need-” He glances around. “You need our friend to take a look at your face. You need medical attention.”

Ralph highly doubts that there’s actually nothing else they can do here, but swallows that down. Getting into arguments with Barry in public is a bad idea. Besides, he really  _ does  _ need Caitlin to poke around at his face. He wouldn’t if his stupid powers had done their stupid job, but he does.

At least he manages to get one last glimpse of Sue before Cisco pulls him through his breach.

* * *

It’s almost laughably easy to break into the hospital. All Ralph has to do is make his face into the rough approximation of a nurse’s and voilà! He can just walk right through the doors. Somehow, though, he’s sure they still have a better security system than STAR Labs does, since that place is a mess.

Finding Sue is quite a bit harder, and he knows the entirety of his plan (it’s not  _ really  _ a plan. It’s, like, a fraction of a plan. It’s an  _ idea) _ banks on her actually being in the hospital nearest to the building where she was taken hostage in the first place instead of literally any other one in the city and instead of having been released with a clean bill of health, but someone out there must be on his side, since he finds her sitting up in a hospital bed filling out some paperwork.

She jumps when he comes in, relaxing only slightly when she recognizes him. “How did you get in here?”

“Pretended to be a nurse,” he says honestly. He rubs his thumb against the palm of his hand. He doesn’t regret choosing to come in civilian clothes (yeah, not getting any weird looks because he wasn’t wearing scrubs might’ve been another red flag), but it feels a bit awkward. Sure, he doesn’t have any confirmation that she knows he and the Elongated Man are one and the same, but she’s  _ gotta  _ know by now, right? There’s no way she doesn’t. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Are  _ you  _ okay?” She asks instead of answering, before confirming his suspicions that she definitely knows who he is. “Your face got pretty messed up by that guy.”

“I heal fast.” Ralph awkwardly sits down in one of the chairs next to her bed. “And it’s hard for me to get hurt. Not a lot can keep me down, at least not for very long."

“Light burned you,” Sue points out, then bites her thumbnail. It’s the closest they’ve gotten to admitting that anything happened when she hired him to find Light. Well, anything  _ unplanned.  _ Wait, no, that’s not the right way to say it either. Saying stuff like that makes it sound like they hooked up. Which they definitely did not do.

“Yeah.” Ralph looks up at the ceiling. There’s a stain on it. That doesn’t seem very sanitary. Maybe Sue should move to a different room, even if the paperwork she’s filling out is the stuff that’ll sign her out. “Yeah, he did. That hurt.”

The silence stretches out longer. She’s not wearing a hospital gown or anything. Just her normal clothes. There’s some wet patches on them. He’s not sure if they’re from tears or melted ice or what. It seems rude to ask, but if he thinks about them then he doesn’t have to think about anything else. He bounces his knee.

“Look,” Ralph says finally, bouncing his knee faster. “I’m really sorry about-”

“I’m sorry,” Sue says finally at the exact same time, putting down her pen with shaking hands. There are suddenly tears in her eyes. “I’m really sorry-”

They stop and look at each other. This is too familiar for comfort. Ralph tries to stop fidgeting. “Uh, sorry. Again. I guess. You can go first.”

“I’m really sorry,” Sue repeats. “I’m sorry about everything.” Her shoulders are shaking now. “I’m sorry that I hired you and dragged you into my mess. I’m sorry I made you go along with a stupid plan I couldn’t even go through with. I’m sorry I implicated you in several crimes. I’m sorry I dumped all of my bullshit onto you-”

Ralph stands up fast and Sue goes silent. Her lower lip is trembling. Ralph carefully sits back down. He doesn’t think he scared her, but if he did, that’s the very last thing he wants. “Hey, if anyone dragged anyone into their bullshit it’s  _ me.  _ I’m sorry for everything today. I told you, I just wanted to stop by and make sure you weren’t hurt. And to say that I’m sorry I didn’t get to you fast enough and made you stay with that wackjob for longer than you had to.” Ralph swallows.”Look, I promise, you don’t have to apologize for anything.”

Sue stands up and sits down in one of the chairs next to him. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I never should’ve followed that lead in there in the first place. It was my mistake on my own time and on my own case. Besides, I’m not even talking about anything that happened today. You _know _that.”

“And  _ I’m  _ reminding  _ you  _ that I agreed to do it. I could’ve stopped pushing. Or I could’ve told the police. Or the Flash. Or whoever the hell that Star City vigilante is. But I didn’t. Even if that was stupid of me.” Ralph keeps looking up at the ceiling instead of back down at Sue’s face. “Even if it means that we might get arrested for it or whatever. I can’t regret it.” He takes a deep breath. “Look. I know-I know he hurt you. And that’s-the idea that someone could do that, to  _ anyone,  _ to  _ you, _ it’s-”

“Not worth you going to jail for,” Sue interrupts. “Not by a long shot.”

“It is to me,” Ralph says quietly. There’s a strange beat in between them. Ralph kind of wants to shrivel himself up into a ball and die. He also kind of wants to get down on his knees and confess his love for this tiny, amazingly brave,  _ perfect  _ woman. He thinks he may want to shrivel up into a ball and die even more.

“Oh,” Sue says just as softly. He’s not totally sure when he started looking at her face. She really is the most beautiful woman he’s ever met. Ever  _ seen.  _ He loves the way she knits her eyebrows while she turns what he just said over in her head. It’s not the right place or the right time, but he finds himself leaning toward her just a little bit more. Just a few inches. And she’s shifting up to meet him, just a little, and then-

“So!” Ralph says a little bit louder than he was initially intending, jerking back suddenly. Sue pulls back too, looking back at her abandoned paperwork on the hospital bed as Ralph returns to looking up at his old friend the ceiling. “You mentioned a lead? And a case? Is that how you ended up in that rat palace?”

Sue smiles thinly, not that Ralph can see it. “Oh, yeah. That. I guess I just… remembered when you said that I’d done some pretty good detective work on my own, and I decided to give it a spin. I’m not charging anyone or anything, the barista at my usual place just mentioned something about wondering what her son was getting up to while she was at work.”

“How did  _ that  _ end up with you in a hostage situation getting rescued by the Flash, Vibe, and the Elongated Man?” Ralph asks, laughing a little bit despite himself.

“It’s a really long story,” Sue sighs. But it doesn’t sound mean. Ralph doesn’t know if he’s imagining it or not, but she feels more at ease with him right here in this conversation than she did when they were spending hours holed up in a warehouse waiting for Light to inevitably make his appearance. Not that that’s much of a surprise. “And the Elongated Man is an absolutely  _ terrible  _ name.”

“Hey, maybe he wasn’t the one who picked it!” Ralph waves his hand. Sue doesn’t need to be subjected to his spiel about how you should never ask the press to name you, especially since most of it relies on Cisco’s powerpoint presentation anyway, which he definitely does not have on hand. “And I’m sure he’d love to hear that whole long story, whenever you’ve got the time to tell it.”

Sue stays silent and turns it over in her head. She wants to say yes. She wants to say yes so badly. But saying yes means tying herself to Ralph even more. It means they’ll look even more suspicious to anyone who goes over the flight information and sees how long they were in town, especially since Sue did a bit of poking around herself while scoping out other detectives with pricier rates before she settled on Ralph after getting a middling recommendation from an acquaintance. She should say no to keep herself-to keep  _ both  _ of them safe, but…

Ah, to hell with it. She looks suspicious enough as it is. Who gives a damn at this point? “Well, is he free on Tuesday at noon to grab lunch at that one sweet little café near his office?”

“I’m sure he is.” Something in Ralph’s gut flutters fast and he tries to squish it down. It’s going to be a meeting between two professionals. That’s all. It’s just like if he went to have lunch with any of his detective buddies. Of which he has exactly none, but  _ still. _

Sue holds out her hand. It’s a bad idea for her to get involved. Of course it is. It can’t  _ not  _ be a bad idea. She’s supposed to be sensible, she should be the one refusing to be in contact with him. Especially after she almost dragged him into a murder. But she already made up her mind on meeting him. It wouldn’t be right to back out now. It just wouldn’t be. “Then it’s a-then he can consider it a date.”

It’s probably a bad idea for Ralph to get involved, even just professionally, with someone who he helped plan a murder with. An attempted murder that he could still probably be charged with, since he barely made an effort to disguise himself and while his literal partner in crime did, she hardly tried to hide her voice. It was probably a bad idea to take her case in the first place, all things considered. It was probably a bad idea to get so far in over his head.

But, well, here’s the thing. Ralph is kind of already head over heels in love with her. He wasn’t lying when he said that any repercussions from what they did-what they almost did and what they  _ actually  _ did-were worth it, just because it was her. And even if a professional meetup for lunch to talk about a case didn’t mean a damn thing in the long run, it sure as hell felt like it meant the whole world.

Ralph’s made a lot of mistakes in his life. There are so many things he’s done and thought about that  _ real  _ superheroes definitely wouldn’t approve of. Especially not superheroes like Barry Allen. 

He’s pretty sure this isn’t one of them.

Ralph tries not to smile too wide when he takes Sue’s hand and carefully shakes it, holding onto it afterward for a little bit too long. He can’t even be bothered to keep up the joke of the Elongated Man being a separate person. “I can’t wait.”

Sue’s stunning, slightly lopsided smile is the most genuine one he’s ever seen from her, and that somehow makes her even more beautiful.

He’s so distracted by that and by the shadow of someone who is probably coming to take Sue’s paperwork walking up to the door that he almost doesn’t notice when she kisses him on the cheek. He most certainly notices it when his body’s automatic response to it is to go out from under him as he literally melts into a puddle on the floor that Sue tries to frantically hide with the hospital bed’s thin blanket, but by then he’s preoccupied with listening to her laughing at him, and-

Yeah. Barry will probably call this a bad idea when he inevitably finds out about it. But Ralph is certain that nothing that involved spending more time with the lovely Sue Dearbon could be considered a bad idea in the slightest. And he’s pretty sure he’d still do just about anything to hear that laugh again. 

So Barry can say whatever the hell he wants, because next Tuesday, Ralph’s got a semi-professional date with the best detective in the city, and he couldn’t ask for anything more.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still not totally sold on this ending, but this is approximately the ninth reworking of it, and I think it definitely fits better than the others, so I decided to keep it. I hope I made it clear that Light dying isn't a bad thing, but it isn't the right choice for Sue in this moment to do it personally-which is something I obviously don't blame her for, too. You can find me at augustheart.tumblr.com.


End file.
